Is a CNG School Bus Conversion a Green Initiative? Or Rather Grey...

This past May, the Rose Tree Media School District here in Media, Pennsylvania was awarded a half million dollar Natural Gas Vehicle Development grant.  The grant will help to fund the district’s larger 4.8 million dollar transportation project, which includes the conversion of 14 existing diesel buses to compressed natural gas (CNG), purchase of 8 new CNG buses, and a new hybrid fueling station owned and operated by the district.   The grant, overseen by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, is part of a “green” initiative that aligns with RTMSD’s commitment to environmental preservation and conservation of natural resources and energy.  

As I read the article in the Media Patch about this grant award, I found myself wondering, is compressed natural gas really a green energy solution?  To me it sounded like just another fossil fuel, and I need to do a little more digging.

It turns out CNG comes from domestic natural gas sources, such as the Marcellus Shale Region that covers much of Western Pennsylvania, and it is touted as a cleaner, greener, cheaper, domestic fuel alternative.   A fleet of CNG buses would produce considerably less CO2 than a fleet of diesel buses.   But does that make CNG a green alternative?  Where does CNG come from, and how is it processed? 

CNG is extracted through a process called hydraulic fracturing, or more commonly “fracking”.  This is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks and release the natural gas inside.   Fracking is a controversial method of obtaining fossil fuels, and it has actually been banned is several cities, towns, and counties across the US and Europe due to health and environmental concerns.  Some residents who live near fracking sites are particularly concerned with ground water contamination and human health impacts.  In fact, the funding for the grant obtained by RTMSD comes from what are known as “impact fees”- fees companies drilling for gas in Pennsylvania are required pay to offset the environmental and health risks of fracking. 

This last fact left my brain going around in circles:  the natural gas companies pay a penalty fee to offset the acknowledged environmental costs of natural gas extraction.  That “impact fee” is then allocated to schools and businesses in the form of grants overseen by the PA Department of Environmental Protection.  The grants are then used to convert businesses from oil to natural gas, or in our case, a fleet of diesel buses to CNG.  Now, to operate its fleet of buses, the school district will be purchasing natural gas.  From the companies.   That gave the money.   To convert the buses. Hmm…

As a teacher, I certainly understand the need for school district to choose cost saving fuel sources, and applaud Rose Tree Media School District’s commitment to natural resource and energy conservation.   At the same time, I question the framing of this grant as a “green” initiative.   While CNG is more cost effective than petroleum oil and will result in decreased carbon emissions in the short term, the long term human and environmental impacts of fracking are great.  For example, the process of hydraulic fracking leaks methane gas into the atmosphere, and methane gas is actually more detrimental to global warming and climate change than carbon dioxide.   Meanwhile there is mounting evidence of rivers, streams, and wells right here in Pennsylvania being polluted by "produced" water, a by-product of fracking that can contain as many as 600 petrochemicals harmful to ecosystems, animals, and human beings.  

Is converting the fleet of school buses to CNG really the way to “green” our public school transportation?  In an ideal world, truly “green” transportation would not rely on fossil fuels at all.  Is this initiative green?   Perhaps it should be reexamined as one that is rather grey.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

By the time we moved in to our new house it was already the beginning of May.   And since we had spent the previous 4.5 months in various different temporary housing situations (a long story best left aside for another blog), I was fully unprepared to plant a vegetable garden.   No starts, no seedlings, not even much of a clue, really.  And then began the work of unpacking and painting and fixing and arranging.   Before we knew it, it was mid-June, and beginning to look like another year would pass us by without fulfilling our vision of finally having our own backyard vegetable garden.

Backyard vegetable gardens, sometimes called “Kitchen Gardens” are important for a number of reasons.   First, growing food can have a major impact on a family budget, especially if, like our family, you buy a LOT of vegetables.   Second, growing your own food helps to guarantee that the food you are feeding your family is free of pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms.  A backyard kitchen garden also helps to reduce fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.   You don’t have to drive anywhere to get your vegetables, and the vegetables are not brought to you via large trucks, planes, or other fossil fuel burning vehicles.  When a local community grows more of its own food, it also helps to build food security.  If there is a drought in another part of the country, or if for whatever reason the food cannot reach us over long distances, we have a local source of sustenance.  Even setting a goal of having 10% of your families food come from local sources, such as your own garden or nearby farmshare, can greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption and build better local food security.  

Vegetable gardens take a bit of planning and prep work.  Generally by the time you get to mid-June, it’s a little late in the game to jump in.  In fact most people I asked, suggested we wait until next year, and maybe look into yardsharing- helping someone out with their backyard garden and sharing in the harvest.   But having our own vegetable garden is something that we had wanted to do every year.  And every year there seemed to be some reason why it didn’t get done.  And since this is the year we’ve decided to try to live our values more, we weren’t going to throw in the trowel just yet, so to speak.  

The house we bought came with a very large vegetable garden plot, about 25 X 15 feet, and by mid –June it was already 3 foot high in weeds.   Located at the end of our driveway, it was an unsightly depressing mess.  Easily viewable from the street, it the first thing we laid eyes on every time we came home.   It took me 4.5 hours to pull the weeds and till the damn thing, and I was sore for 3 full days after.  The clock was ticking and we just didn’t know how in the world we were going to get this thing fenced and planted by solstice (which was our pre-determined plant it or get off the pot date).

Then I posted this ad to our local Timebank:  “Looking for some help with our garden plot: basic fencing, building some garden beds, and figuring out what can be planted this late in the season and where to get good seedlings or plants.”  That evening I had Timebank Member Kathy L. over for about 2.5 hours.   She showed us how to measure out raised garden beds and then sat down with a stack of graph paper and helped us plan out where to plant the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, beans, peppers, eggplant, and greens.   The next day Chris, from My Kitchen Harvest (http://www.mykitchenharvest.com/) came by in his truck and delivered our babies while my husband Ibrahim carefully measured out and leveled our six raised beds (for 12 rows).   Later that afternoon Timebank member Donna C. came over with her sun hat and shovel and spent 2.5 hours digging, helping us get the fence up, and showing us how to keep our groundhog out.  The next evening, on Solstice, at sunset, we planted all of our seedlings. 

We promptly left the next morning for a week long vacation at the Jersey Shore. I know, I know, bad timing.  But fortunately it rained nearly every evening that week, and when we came back we actually had tomatoes.  I mean, real live green baby tomatoes that had grown in our own garden, for a whole week.

People keep asking me if we like our new house.  And, I don’t know, I mean, it’s a house.  There are some things I like OK.  Some things I don’t like at all.  The mortgage freaks me out to no end.   But the one thing I really LOVE, the thing that really makes me feel that I am HOME, is our garden.   It’s the first thing I see every day when I come home.  And it makes me smile. Every. Single. Time.   I love to see my daughter’s excitement and wonder with each new change- how large the zucchini plants got after a few days of rain, how the cucumbers started creeping up the trellis, and how the basil grew so tall we had to stake it like the tomatoes.  I can’t wait for the day when we can actually start picking things and eating our own vegetables for dinner.  Our harvest will come a little late this year, since we got off to a late start but we’ll get there, thanks to the amazing support we got from our friends and Transition Town and Timebank members.  This garden, and the community that helped us build it, is truly what makes our house a home. 

In Transition

On Earth Day this year, my family bought our first home in Media, Pennsylvania, an eclectic suburb outside of Philly locally known as "Everybody's Hometown".  We chose Media, because it is a Transition Town, meaning some of its residents are part of an international network of communities committed to building local resilience in face of a changing global climate.  Transition Towns focus on initiatives such as local sustainable food, renewable energy, reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, sharing resources, and re-skilling.   It was important to me to find and settle down in a community with like-minded people, who recognize the current energy and climate crises, and take meaningful action to build local ecological resilience.  Part of my vision for joining this community was to take a leadership role in community initiatives, but also to begin a process of shifting my own life to more align with my values.  

I spent the better part of my late teens and early 20s traveling to and living on eco-villages, from Tich Nhat's Hahn's Plum Village in France, to Auroville, a sustainable eco-city in Southern India, to Pinon Eco-Village in New Mexico.   I always envisioned that I would eventually live in an eco-village, perhaps even one that I, with a group of friends and family, would start.   But life in my late 20s and early 30s took a different direction:  graduate degrees, marriage, family.   At some point I found myself throwing out hundreds if not thousands of disposable diapers and buying questionably raised packaged chicken in the shape of dinosaurs.  And the backyard garden I spent each winter dreaming about never seemed to materialize each spring amidst the demands of work and parenting.  Although I recycled and frequented the farmers market, living a general lifestyle so contrary to my values and vision was depressing, and change was needed.   And as long as work demands necessitated close proximity to a city, it didn't seem living on an eco-village nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians was going to be practical.  Becoming an active member of a Transition Town seemed the best most logical place to start my own Transition towards a more sustainable lifestyle. 

The journey began 6 months before we actually moved to Media, when I began making connections with members of the Transition community over email, in person during our many house-hunting visits, and more deeply at a 3 day Timebanking and Transition conference 3.5 months before we actually moved to town.  One thing that continually struck me about the people I met was the level of intelligence, thoughtfulness, and depth to which each individual contributed to the collective.   Having spent over a decade in the non-profit world, I know how very challenging community ventures can be, particularly those that rely heavily on volunteers and function with very little capital.   A key ingredient to the success of any community initiative is commitment, which the members of Transition Town seemed to have in spades, along with a healthy dose of organizational talent.   Needless to say, I was excited to join this group.   Yet vision and intention is often difficult to actualize in the face of well, life.  And throughout our first year in Media, I often found myself struggling once again to align my life with my values.  

The reality is that shifting our lives from one of shopper, consumer, fossil fuel burner to one that lives more in balance with the earth and her limited resources is really.damn.hard.  One of the first things we needed to do when we moved to our rental house in the Borough was get things.  Stuff.   Kitchen stuff and bedroom stuff and front patio stuff.   I had this vision of getting everything second hand off craigslist, freecycle, and our community swap page.   Down with Walmart, down with Target.  And in truth, we did find some great things on the swap page.  But we needed more things, and so began the back and forth trips (by car) to Bed Bath and Beyond and the set of avocado green made in China towels that I honestly could not make myself not buy at Home Goods.  They just matched the bathroom paint so well-  simultaneously cursing myself a hypocrite while basking in the earthy crunchy greenness of my perfectly matched bathroom towel and shower curtain set. 

And so this is the reality of what it means for me to be In Transition.   There is a constant pull and tug between this life that we envision-- this life of organic backyard gardens and bicycles and stuff-swapping, and the life in which we are inculcated and attached-- the lifestyle that would better sustain our bodies and spirits, and the lifestyle that is slowly killing our planet (but feels so good in the short term).   This is my journey and the journey of other Transitioners as we attempt to shift our own lives and our communities towards something better, something more sustainable, something more beautiful.   I will admit, I am petrified of this change.   As much as I know I would be happiest ankle deep in farm soil, I am really attached to our weekly trips to Trader Joe's and all that little pre-packaged goodness.   As much as I know I would be healthier and happier riding a bike everywhere, I love my car.  And I am also petrified of sharing this journey publicly, equal parts idealism and pragmatism, failure and success.  But here goes nothing.   This is officially post move entry #1.